


Lifeline

by labocat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon, Stargazing, ToT: Chocolate Box, linked vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-24 03:20:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8354914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labocat/pseuds/labocat
Summary: The universe was made just to be seen by our eyes.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miaou Jones (miaoujones)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miaoujones/gifts).



“Just think, all of those stars are places we could go.”

They’re lying on their backs on a blanket just outside the Garrison, just inches apart. Keith keeps clenching his hand into a fist to keep from twitching it just that distance so that his and Shiro’s hands are touching. Ultimately, the warmth in Shiro’s voice when he talks about exploring the stars sets the same flutter in his chest alight, so Keith thinks it’s okay that he can’t muster up the courage. Shiro starts tracing a path in the stars, reaching up to the sky above them like he can pull himself up there by his will alone.

Keith thinks that if anyone could, it’d be Shiro.

“They’re places we _will_ go.” The smile Keith receives in return is more than enough to ease the ache in his heart at thinking this might be one of their last times to stargaze on this hill together.

“Everything’s new and unexplored - there’ll still be plenty of stars to fly to once you graduate too. I don’t know where they’ll send me yet, but I’ll make sure to leave a few worlds undiscovered so we can see them for the first time together.” Keith knows firsthand how hard it is to shift to nudge someone’s shoulder with your own when you’re lying on a blanket, but he’s hardly surprised at the smooth ease with which Shiro does. Everything seems effortless around Shiro.

Except saying the words that always get stuck in his throat, of course. The selfish ones he can never voice because every time they come out here, he can hear the longing in Shiro’s voice to be up there among the stars, piloting craft to new and fantastic worlds. He can’t keep him grounded, even for a couple more years.

“You’d better. The student has to surpass the master, after all.”

“I’ll do my best to only discover two or three and save the rest for you,” Shiro laughs and shifts so that he nudges Keith’s shoulder again. But this time he doesn’t shift back and Keith clings to it, the warmth of Shiro’s body against his and the hope that Shiro means every word and will still mean them in the years to come.

 

* * *

 

There are still two thermoses in Keith’s bag when he goes up to the hill: it’s tradition, after all, and the fact that one half of their stargazing club is currently up among the stars is no reason to break with tradition. There are other cadets who would want to stargaze and learn more about the night sky they’re here to learn how to explore, but he can’t bring himself to ask or advertise. He cradles the memories of the nights he and Shiro had spent out here too closely to his chest - the thought of introducing someone else into that is a thorn in his heart. He’s not alone when he comes out here, anyway.

He sets out the blanket and settles on top of it, reaching one hand out to the stars just like he could pull himself up with just that. Instead, he relaxes his hand and traces constellations. He recites Shiro’s favorites first, wriggling around on the blanket to make sure he gets them all, even Orion, whose head can only barely be seen on the late autumn horizon, made easier by the position of the Pleiades. Then come his favorites, ending with the ones he holds deep in his heart, the ones he and Shiro had come up with themselves one winter night when the nights were long and neither of them could sleep. They’re lower in the horizon, but he can still trace the spiky mane of the one they’d called the Lion, using Taurus as a guide.

Finally, as he starts in on the second thermos of coffee - he knows so much coffee will keep him up all night, but he can’t bring himself to care, not when it won’t be much of a change anyway - he swallows thickly and traces a path to Kerberos.

His finger lingers, wavering slightly the longer he holds his arm up. But much like he couldn’t voice his request that night, he can’t bring himself to lower his arm, no matter how painful it gets.

_I wish you were still here. I wish you’d waited for me._

As he wraps up the blanket and heads back to the barracks, he thinks that maybe if he studies harder, trains harder, he can graduate a year earlier.

 

* * *

 

"Y’know, each day we’re up here, I swear, it gets more and more beautiful.”

Matt steps up, computer tucked under his arm, and joins Shiro in looking up at the sky. Shiro knows he’s supposed to be keeping an eye out for trouble, but Kerberos is quiet. There’s some hope that the ice samples they’re here to take will yield some sign of life, but it’s already more than Shiro could have ever asked for: he’s one of the first humans to step foot on Kerberos, to travel to a new part of space. One more step towards the world exploration he’d promised Keith.

He doesn’t know what time it is back on Earth - even with a clock, being in space quickly meant all time lost any sense of light relevance - 2AM looked much the same as 1PM as 10PM with how slow Kerberos’ rotation was. But he thinks it’s dark now, back home, and if he closes his eyes, he can pretend that Keith is doing the same thing, seeing the same stars from a different angle. He’d enjoy coming up with all new constellations if he were here, Shiro thinks, new names and new lore for a new world and theirs alone. He turns toward the direction of Earth’s sun and simply breathes for a bit; for a moment the recycled air almost smells like freshly crushed grass and the pour-over coffee Keith had become obsessed with and Shiro hopes with all his heart that Keith is watching.

“Homesick?” Matt’s hand on his shoulder breaks Shiro out of his zoning. “Man, I’ve been there and back; if you want, I can put the same program on your HUD that I’ve got on mine so that you always know what direction Earth’s in. I love it up here and all, but sometime’s it’s just nice to know where your roots are.”

Shiro can feel that his smile is wider, truer than it’s been in days when he turns back to Matt. Roots feel like an odd concept up here where they float freely when the gravity is disabled, but a tether, a lifeline back to Earth feels just right. He thinks of Keith’s smiles while they were on the hill and how he was never sure whether the softness he saw was actually there on his face or a trick of the low light.

“Homesick. Yeah, you know, I guess I am.”

 

* * *

 

As Keith comes to the top of the hill, he swears it’s the last time. He knows that Shiro wouldn’t want him to stop coming, just because of this, but the hill has lost all appeal. He has better things to do with his time than to waste it watching the stars without any equipment; it leaves him feeling cold in more ways than one. Still, he knows he owes Shiro this much at least and his shoulders start to shake as he pulls the black thermos from his bag and sets it on the hill. He hopes Shiro’s parents will forgive him for not attending the Garrison spectacle - he thinks they know him well enough to know how watching people who barely knew Shiro clamor for a part in his remembrance turned his stomach.

Instead, he pours some of the coffee out onto the hill, the rich scent of the beans he’d roasted earlier that day wafting up. He’d gotten used to preparing the coffee alone, but more often than not still found himself halfway through a defense of the technique every time he brought the roaster or the press out, before he realized there was no one to call him a coffee fanatic and start the well-trodden banter.

He refuses to believe it was pilot error that led the Kerberos mission to its end - Shiro _promised_. He promised he’d be back, and when the best pilot in a decade makes you a promise, you can be sure he won’t make an _error_. There’s no one at the Garrison he can trust - there never has been, really - so this is his farewell. He’ll make it up there under his own power, not beholden to the bureaucracy that swept the Kerberos details under the rug, who threw their best, most dedicated pilot under the bus for the sake of saving face.

This is a promise of a different sort, as he looks up to the stars. He’ll get to the bottom of this. For Shiro.

 

* * *

 

Shiro knows he’s still in space. At times, that’s all he can say for certain: days pass in a blur where he’s unsure if he spent them in the ring or in an illusion. Reality gets thinner with each pass through the corridors, with even the heavy weight of the shackles and the way they bite into his wrist something the illusions can recreate.

But the stars and their movements are constant. The one time there had been stars in the dark illusions, they’d twinkled too quickly, shone too brightly. They were everything he wanted, beautiful and free.

They were how he knew the grass beneath his feet wasn’t real.

There had been someone missing, someone he knew should be there, even though he can’t remember anything or anyone from before. He knew, logically, there was a history, a name he should be calling.

But also a name, a memory he thinks he’s protecting, closing it up behind walls so it can’t become part of the whirl of pain and confusion he’s become accustomed to.

The stars remind him there must be something beyond this ship, if only he knew what direction to head in.

 

* * *

 

Shiro rubs his metal arm absentmindedly on the quiet bridge of the castle, staring out into the blackness. He doesn’t know the extent of all the Galra have taken from him, but at least the quiet calm he feels while staring out at the stars is still there.

The other paladins have turned in for the night, so it’s a surprise to hear the door open and footsteps approach him. Not so much of a surprise, after all, as the footsteps are soft and familiar. Keith joins him to stand by his side and stare out at the expanse of space before them. Quick glances miss, then meet, each other’s gazes, catching for a few moments before both of them turn back to the glass. Shiro can feel the flush hot on his face and can’t bear risking looking over at Keith again. It feels too open, like that night before assignments when he knew Keith wanted to say something and wouldn’t.

“Say it; it’s alright now,” Shiro says without turning from the glass. It’s easier, somehow, to have the stars as a third party to their conversation. He feels, more than hears, Keith’s exhalation of breath and loosening of the tension in his shoulders and braces himself for the worst. He’s not whole anymore, his time with the Galra is a minefield of unpleasant memories, and there’s nothing either of them can do about it.

“All I ever wanted was for us to do this together. After you left, all I could think about was what if you hadn’t. What if I’d asked you to wait?” The words feel well-worn, less of a question and full of longing for what never would be and the knowledge and pain that even if he had asked, the answer would have been the same.

“But now we’re here and while I can’t say we’re a proper team or anything, we’ve got something there. It’s…,” Keith pauses, hand moving to brush against Shiro’s as if reassuring himself that Shiro is still there, that this is real. His eyes are still staring out at the stars but are so full of the past and the future that Shiro can’t help but reach out and twine his fingers with Keith’s. He feels every pilot’s callous on Keith’s palm, the echoes of where his own would be if they hadn’t been altered to better suit a weapon than a shuttle’s thruster. At Keith’s jolt, Shiro squeezes his hand, warming at the smile that slips across Keith’s face. The bridge is better lit than the hill - the softness there is all Keith and just for him.

“It’s still you and me, though, it’s still something I want and something I want to protect.” Keith takes a deep breath and Shiro squeezes his hand again. “I want to protect us, I want to pick out new constellations with you on all the different worlds we’re going to save from the Galra. I want to be there with you when we land on those new worlds.” He looks down at their joined hands and runs his thumb along the back of Shiro’s hand.

“I want _this_.” He’s looking up at Shiro, as open and as beautiful as the stars in front of them, and Shiro can only lean down and whisper against Keith’s lips:

“Yes. Together.”


End file.
